Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper eBook

Lawford cast on the ribald Milt a somewhat angry glance.
Yet he did not speak again for a moment.

“Tidy craft,” grunted Cap’n Joab,
eying the young woman who was approaching the store
along the white road.

“I saw her get out of Noah’s ark when
he landed at the post-office this noon,” Lawford
explained to Cap’n Joab. “She looks
like a nice girl.”

“Trim as a yacht,” declared the old man
admiringly.

She was plainly city bred—­and city gowned—­and
she carried her light traveling bag by a strap over
her shoulder. Her trim shoes were dusty from
her walk and her face was pink under her wide hat brim.

Lawford stepped out upon the porch. His gaze
was glued again to this vision of young womanhood;
but as he stood at one side she did not appear to
see him as she mounted the steps.

The heir of the Salt Water Taffy King was twenty-four,
his rather desultory college course behind him; and
he thought his experience with girls had been wide.
But he had never seen one just like Louise Grayling.
He was secretly telling himself this as she made her
entrance into Cap’n Abe’s store.

CHAPTER III

IN CAP’N ABE’S LIVING-ROOM

Louise came into the store smiling and the dusty,
musty old place seemed actually to brighten in the
sunshine of her presence. Her big gray eyes
(they were almost blue when their owner was in an introspective
mood) now sparkled as her glance swept Cap’n
Abe’s stock-in-trade—­the shelves of
fly-specked canned goods and cereal packages, with
soap, and starch, and half a hundred other kitchen
goods beyond; the bolts of calico, gingham, “turkey
red,” and mill-ends; the piles of visored caps
and boxes of sunbonnets on the counter: the ship-lanterns,
coils of rope, boathooks, tholepins hanging in wreaths;
bailers, clam hoes, buckets, and the thousand and
one articles which made the store on the Shell Road
a museum that later was sure to engage the interest
of the girl.

Now, however, the clutter of the shop gained but fleeting
notice from Louise. Her gaze almost immediately
fastened upon the figure of the bewhiskered old man,
with spectacles and sou’wester both pushed back
on his bald crown, who mildly looked upon her—­his
smile somehow impressing Louise Grayling as almost
childish, it was so kindly.

Cap’n Joab had dodged through the door after
Lawford Tapp. The other boys from The Beaches
followed their leader. Old Washy Gallup and Amiel
Perdue suddenly remembered that it was almost chore
time as this radiant young woman said:

“I wish to see Mr. Abram Silt—­Captain
Silt. Is he here?”

“I’m him, miss,” Cap’n Abe
returned politely.

Milt Baker surely would have remained of all the crowd
of idlers, gaping oilily at the visitor across the
top of the rusty stove, had not a shrill feminine
voice been heard outside the store,